Where The Red Fern Grows

1. Consider the structure of Where the Red Fern Grows and examine the role of the narrator.The voice of the first-person narrator, Billy Colman, is used throughout the novel and it is of interest that the narration by the adult Billy is used as a framing device. He both introduces and concludes the work and …

(Woodrow) Wilson Rawls was born in 1913 in Oklahoma and grew up in the Ozark Mountains. He used to have an old blue tick hound and this was his companion as he grew up. His mother taught him to read and Jack London’s Call of the Wild influenced his early decision to become a writer. …

“It’s hard for a man to stand and watch an old hound fight against such odds, especially if that man has memories in his heart like I had in mine. I had seen the time when an old hound like that had given his life so that I might live.”(p. 2) This reference comes in …

ChristianityBilly’s faith in God is tied to his Christian upbringing and it is referred to whenever he faces a new obstacle. His mother is also seen to pray in difficult times, and to offer thanks for assistance.This faith is largely unquestioned, though, and is naturalized in the novel as the supposed normal way to live …

Chopping down the treeBilly’s decision to chop down the great sycamore on his first time of hunting shows his commitment to hunting and is also a means to symbolize how he is growing increasingly independent of his parents.He refuses to accept his father’s help and this demonstrates both his loyalty to his dogs and his …

Characters Billy ColmanBilly is the first-person narrator of this novel. It is structured around his reminiscences as looks back to his childhood and recounts the tales of his experiences with his hunting dogs, Little Ann and Old Dan.FatherBilly’s father, mother and unnamed younger sisters are given only minor roles in this work as the majority …

Summary – Chapters Nineteen and TwentyIn Chapter Nineteen, it is related how once he is back at home the hunting carries on as before. One night, he is sure his dogs have ‘treed’ a bobcat and the fourth time they tree the same animal Little Ann comes to Billy and he knows something is wrong. …

Summary – Chapter EighteenThe storm blows itself out before dawn. Billy cannot hear the dogs but thinks he can hear someone whooping. The judge says he thinks it is the men from the camp searching for them. They whoop in return and the searchers answer them.The searchers arrive and tell them that 25 men have …

Summary – Chapters Fifteen, Sixteen and SeventeenThat night they stay over at Bluebird Creek and make a lean-to. Grandpa gives Billy two tins of corned beef to feed the dogs, and notices Old Dan will not eat before Little Ann has been fed too. He asks Billy if he has trained them to do this. …

Summary – Chapters Ten, Eleven and TwelveHis mother makes him a cap from his first hide and says later that she wishes she had not done so as this seems to make him ‘coon crazy’. He goes out hunting every night unless the weather is terrible.As his grandfather had predicted, the price of coon skins …